Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed in 1835, “Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.” That certainly describes the grand struggle over voting rights now unfolding in courtrooms across the country. And when it comes to who can vote and when, a clear message is hard to discern. In recent days, rulings, appeals and motions have pinballed around the system, with the U.S. Supreme Court answering emergency pleas , allowing some changes to take effect and temporarily blocking others, while key appeals head their way. The latest lurch: In a decision emailed out at 5 a.m. Saturday morning, the justices let Texas implement its controversial voter ID law, the nation’s strictest, just two days before early voting begins in the state.

Amid the confusion, an important new element has emerged. The breakthrough? Facts. Two powerful judicial opinions—one from a Texas trial judge, another from an esteemed appeals court jurist—and a landmark government study have shed new light on the costs and consequences of restrictive voting laws. They answer some key questions: Are these laws malevolent? (In Texas, at least, yes.) Do they provide a benefit that outweighs their cost? (No.) Do they suppress the vote? (Alarmingly, it seems, yes.) And can we prevent fraud without disenfranchising Americans? (Yes, absolutely.)

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In a zone foggy with legal rhetoric, these three documents will—and should—live on beyond the 2014 election cycle. They might even help shape a new legal regime to protect voters while protecting against fraud. They’re worth a close read.

Here’s some background: Over the past four years—and for the first time since the Jim Crow era—nearly two dozen states have passed new laws making it harder to vote. The laws range from cutbacks on early voting (Ohio and North Carolina), to a repeal of Election Day registration (Maine), to harsh rules requiring specific types of government identification to vote (states from Texas to Tennessee). Florida even cracked down on nonpartisan voter registration drives, forcing the League of Women Voters—hardly a Trotskyist cell!—to shut down its operations.

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In 2011, my organization, the Brennan Center for Justice, calculated that the first wave of these new laws, if implemented, could have made it far harder for five million citizens to vote. At first, the judiciary seemed to recognize that risk. In the run up to the 2012 election, courts around the country routinely blocked or postponed the new voting regulations. On Election Day, few of those disenfranchising laws were in effect.

Then last year, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in. In Shelby County v. Holder, it gutted the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act by neutering its requirement, under Section 5 of the law, that states with a history of discrimination clear changes to voting regulations with a court or the Justice Department. The court was bitterly divided, five to four. During oral argument in February 2013, Justice Antonin Scalia called the Voting Rights Act little more than a “racial entitlement.” “Even the name of it is wonderful, the Voting Rights Act,” he added. “Who’s going to vote against that?” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing in heated dissent, warned that gutting the law “is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Predictably, many Southern states once covered by the Voting Rights Act moved swiftly to implement new, stricter voting rules. In other states, laws that had been postponed in the run up to 2012 began to go into effect.

The result has been a paper storm of lawsuits, argued in courtrooms across the country, as voting rights groups and the Justice Department challenge these new restrictions. Much hangs in the balance: This year, 21 states will hold elections under rules enacted since 2011, seven of them for the first time. With control of the Senate and much else teetering on microscopically tight margins, laws that block eligible voters could have major effects.

That’s why these new three new treatises are so important.

The first came from a courtroom in Corpus Christi, Texas. Just hours after the Supreme Court issued Shelby County in 2013, Texas implemented its new voter identification law. The statute was nakedly partisan and almost comically precise in its construction: Texans could show a concealed carry weapons permit, but not a University of Texas student ID. Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott rushed to put the law in place. Abbott, of course, is now the candidate for governor who might benefit from the law’s conservative tilt.

The U.S. Justice Department promptly sued Texas, as did voting rights groups. (The Brennan Center, together with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the Dechert law firm, represents the Texas NAACP and the state Mexican American Legislative Caucus in these cases.) The suits relied on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which is still on the books. This section of the act prohibits voting practices that discriminate against minorities. But plaintiffs usually cannot obtain relief until after the offending law is already in effect, and shifts the burden of proof of discrimination onto the law’s challengers, a much tougher standard. Previously Section 2 had rarely been used to address voting law changes; it wasn’t necessary, given the pre-clearance option Now it was one of the few vehicles for redress left.